Kids are smarter than the dumb standards they face in our schools

When a child walks into a classroom, they tend to be smarter than people usually to give them credit for. In a few days, they can tell you who the class clown is, who is the smartest in what subject, and somehow they all figure it out for themselves.

When it comes to the teacher, they are also able to control the classroom. Just get a teacher who had been a cheerleader and direct her to the best game she cheered for, who won, who played on the team, and there goes a whole class. Kids are not as stupid as we make them out to be.

In many instances we no longer challenge them; we don’t want to embarrass them or make someone in the class feel bad because they don’t have the answer. We are doing a great disservice to our students, and either we don’t know it or, worse yet, we don’t care.

There are no guarantees in life. You, as a student, will graduate and with some luck, go on to college. But will it be the college of your choice, or do you not measure up?

You may vie for a position and someone else may get it.

Life is full of disappointments, and the sooner we allow our children to experience defeat, the better they learn to rise above it or how to face it. One of the biggest disservices we did our children was to eliminate keeping scores in sports. Kids know who got a hit, or a basket, and they also know who won the game. Yet, at the end of the season, they all get awards. Why? Did the losers earn them? Not in my opinion.

In some schools, they have discontinued honoring outstanding students for fear of hurting the egos of the other children. Life doesn’t keep us all from heartache or disappointment, and the sooner we learn to handle the curves life throws at us, the better.

We now have schools whose students know nothing about our government, literature and the sciences because someone in the education field has determined these courses are too demanding of students, or perhaps we have too few teachers to teach these subjects. We allow our high school students to choose such exciting subjects as sailing, weight lifting and other things that should not be taught in school for credit. Then we wonder why we have so many imported mathematicians, chemists and scientists.

Our kids are not able to do the courses. For a country so rich, we have plenty of schools that seem pathetic. I don’t feel we need to send more good money after bad; I just feel we have to raise our standards.

I have found most often that the more you expect of someone, the more they produce. We also need to get rid of a lot of the fluff - sailing, black history, some of the other hyphenated subjects. These should be covered within physical education classes and history. We need subjects that promote critical thinking, not easy credits.

I recently read that Yale had a petition signed by 160 students who wanted Shakespeare eliminated from the literature. I would like someone to explain why students are creating the classes?

We need to step back and take a look at what we are referring to as our education system

The writer lives in Murrells Inlet.

This story was originally published July 10, 2016 at 8:41 AM with the headline "Kids are smarter than the dumb standards they face in our schools."